


The Boy With the Sad Eyes

by mon0worldd



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Eiji's Sister - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Sorry, Mental Health Issues, Okumura Eiji Needs a Hug, Other, Post-Canon, References to Depression, Survivor Guilt, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27563962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mon0worldd/pseuds/mon0worldd
Summary: In which Eiji returns to Izumo with a heavy heart.[will be editing the tags as i go as to not ruin any element of surprise]
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

Nahoko Okumura walks into his brother's room with a glass in hand.  
"Ei-chan," she says. "Lemonade?"  
Eiji Okumura has his headphones in. He's playing his music as loud as he possibly can, which isn't very loud, because you can hear it from the outside, and their mother doesn't really like that.  
Instead of replying, he subtly nods his head, and it's silent as Nahoko places the lemonade on the table. It's silent as she leaves Eiji's bedroom, and it's not-so-silent in Nahoko Okumura's mind when she returns to the kitchen table to do her homework. 

Three weeks ago, her mother came in to announce that Eiji was back home. They were to pick him up, spend a few days in Tokyo, and return to the Shimane prefecture. It was that simple. He was home after nearly two years and they were happy to meet him. 

But the Okumuras weren't exactly prepared to meet a wheelchair and a face streaked with tears.  
Shunichi Ibe, she thinks that's his name, told them the most he could.  
"A lot of it, I wasn't there for," he kept saying.  
Eiji got shot, real bad.  
A boy named Ash Lynx is dead.  
There was something about a drug, and an (also dead) Chinese guy named Shorter. It took Nahoko some time to understand that was a name and not an English superlative, an awkwardly placed anglicism amongst Shunichi’s rapid-fire Japanese.

Her brother himself wouldn't utter a word about it. He had become a shell of a man. 

Nahoko remembers the day Eiji left for America. Ibe-san kept reassuring them that, “This is for the greater good. It’ll make Ei-chan feel better.”  
Maybe he lied.

She overheard her mother talking to the man once.  
“Eiji is so. . . different,” she whispered. “What happened?”  
Shunichi Ibe only sighed. "He was in love, I think."

The boy with the sad eyes. That is what Eiji met, lost, and became.


	2. Chapter 2

_ “Is it possible to feel pain so strong you feel nothing at all?” _

Eiji Okumura turns onto his back and gazes at his ceiling, the words playing in his head over and over again until he could no longer bear it. 

He’d first heard them from an extraneous ad dated 1956 about mental health awareness. Of course, the stigma of the times made the ad mildly offensive, but it was that one sentence that Eiji stuck with. The introduction, the first spoken words after a silent skit. The beginning of the headache and the following redundant stream of questions that fills his head without any answers. He hadn’t seen the advertisement since before New York, why had it resurfaced now? 

If he closed his eyes he could replay most of it, as if he’d watched it all yesterday. Maybe he had. Days seemed to blur together now anyway. 

_ “When faced with extreme guilt and grief, the average man can fall into despair. He will feel like nothing is worth living for. A debt of many forms begins to amass under his nose, and he will not bat an eye. His thoughts are plagued by what grieved him and what made his guilt arise.” _

He didn’t want to feel attached to America. The malicious happenings overlapped the good ones. But every single one of them came down to Ash _ ,  _ in one way or another.

It’s agonizing; it eats at his brain and tells him he doesn’t deserve to get up and be human — he wasn’t there to save Ash, so why should he save himself?

Eiji could feel himself forgetting small things about his voyage. The names, the faces, the emotions and the non-traumatic events became a numb blur in his mind and he didn’t like it. Eiji wanted to sink further, he wanted to  _ feel _ more, whether or not it hurt he didn’t care.

A small head pokes into the doorway. “Ibe is here,” his mother mumbles, “He brought snacks from America, do you want some?” 

The brunette weakly raises his head and removes an earbud (although it’s a tad unnecessary ;  he wasn’t playing anything in the first place.) “What are the snacks?”

“Well, I was thinking you come out of your room and see for yourself, Eiji.” She smiles a sad type of smile, her eyes fleeting from corner to corner, untouched desk to unkempt bed. 

“Why?” 

The silence lingers for a bit. 

“Because you need to be out there.” 

Eiji nods absently, his eyes fixated on the doorknob. He opens his mouth as if to argue, but decides better; he decides that the better option is to get up, and start trudging. 

"Close the door, please. I'll be there in a minute." 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello !! I haven't written that much these past few months because of school, but I'm back and able to finally manage my time!  
> This is gonna be a multi-chapter, although I'm not sure when to conclude it, and each chapter won't be too long (hopefully.)  
> Currently dragging out the last of my will and trying to work URRRRRGGHHHHHHHH.


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